Archive for the ‘militnts’ Category

India on Wednesday said Pakistan was in “denial” over the Mumbai attacks and refusing to acknowledge evidence linking the gunmen who carried out the assault with elements in Pakistan.

“If anyone is in a state of denial, anything that we give will be denied,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters.

The minister said the Pakistani father of the sole surviving gunman had confirmed to Pakistan television that his son was involved.

“If that is not evidence then what is?” Chidambaram said.

AFP

The November attacks in Mumbai left 172 dead, including nine of the gunmen whom India insists were trained by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taibamilitant group and abetted by unnamed Pakistani agencies.

Last week Pakistan’s acting High Commissioner Afrasiab Mehdi Hashmi was summoned to the Indian foreign ministry and given a letter purportedly written by the sole surviving gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman.

The letter said he was from Pakistan and that he wanted to meet Pakistan’s top envoy in New Delhi.

Pakistan’s own investigation of terror attacks in Mumbai has begun to show substantive links between the 10 gunmen and an Islamic militant group that its powerful spy agency spent years supporting, say people with knowledge of the probe.

At least one top leader of militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or “Army of the Pure,” captured in a raid earlier this month in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, has confessed the group’s involvement in the attack as India and the U.S. have alleged, according to a senior Pakistani security official.

The disclosure could add new international pressure on Pakistan to accept that the attacks, which left 171 dead in India, originated within its borders and to prosecute or extradite the suspects. That raises difficult and potentially destabilizing issues for the country’s new civilian government, its military and the spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence — which is conducting interrogations of militants it once cultivated as partners.

A probe could add new international pressure on Pakistan to accept that the attacks originated within its borders.

Pakistani security officials say a top Lashkar commander, Zarar Shah, has admitted a role in the Mumbai attack during interrogation, according to the security official, who declined to be identified discussing the investigation. “He is singing,” the security official said of Mr. Shah. The admission, the official said, is backed up by U.S. intercepts of a phone call between Mr. Shah and one of the attackers at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, the site of a 60-hour confrontation with Indian security forces.